I’ve long been fascinated by the strange, multidimensional poetics of e.e. cummings. His work seems clearly to echo movements in the visual arts, and in fact he was also a painter whose early influences included Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism.

Sometimes amid the collage of neologisms and images he holds out until the final line to unveil a poem:

The following haiku is from a dream, copied down verbatim. At the time I knew it was written in response to, and in honor of the work of Kaneko Tohta:

at what point during the A-bomb did the cherry blossoms bloom

now gone

How did the impact of Tohta’s poetry weave a way into my dreams? His work was largely unknown in the west until the publication of a series of works translated from the Japanese by The Kon Nichi Translation Group, (of which Richard Gilbert is a member). The strikingly original imagery and often surreality of Tohta’s haiku cause them to linger in the consciousness long after reading.

I was struck by his unflinching, matter-of factness when addressing topics like the war and the unspeakably horrific Atomic bomb:

one dog two catswe three finallynot A-bombed

This alongside his gift for transcendently sensitive imagery reflecting on man’s relationship to Nature makes Tohta’s work remarkable, moving, and deeply affecting:

we all flow, float away

the sea tide stays

The two haiku above are from Kaneko Tohta: Selected Haiku With Notes and Commentary, Part 2: 1961-2012, published by Red Moon Press in 2012.

Of note:

Scott Metz has written an exploration of Tohta’s blue sharks haiku, including numerous possible translations from a variety of sources, as well as a look at the unexpected role of surrealism in haiku. This R’r blog entry is well worth a second or even third read and can be found in the Roadrunner Haiku Journal archives here: